OTHER TECH

HD Movies Free on Cable "Free" and "cable" don't usually go together. Yet about 80% of Comcast households are being offered a sprinkling of high-def video-on-demand movies free each month. April titles will include Cliffhanger, Desperado, and The Fifth Element. You can start, pause, and replay them whenever you want, and you don't need a DVR. - Michael Antonoff

New WiFi Standard will Support HDTV The next phase of Wi-Fi, which will allow wireless beaming of multiple streams of high-def video throughout a home, is on track for the first half of 2007. Products compatible with the new IEEE 802.11n standard should appear then, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance, the industry group charged with certifying equipment as compliant with home-networking specs.

When 802.11n networks arrive, they'll be compatible with 802.11a, b, and g gear but will operate at greater distances and higher speeds. As defined in a consensus proposal among manufacturers, the so-called "n standard" will transmit Wi-Fi signals up to 650 feet at rates as high as 540 to 600 megabits per second (Mbps), about ten times that of 802.11g. Minimum speed will be 100 Mbps, with the higher rates used to transmit multiple HDTV streams.

To achieve all that, each 802.11n transmitter and receiver will use up to four antennas. And for increased reliability, several redundant copies of the data will be transmitted.

Want a taste of the future? There are a few "pre-n" networking products available that are based on earlier drafts of the standard. However, the Wi-Fi Alliance warns that those n-preemies could cause interoperability problems with future "Wi-Fi Certified" products. - Stephen A. Booth

Digital TV Transition Date Set Feb. 17, 2009, is the digital TV date. President Bush has signed the bill marking the cutoff of analog TV broadcasting. Two $40 vouchers will go to each household needing converters.

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